High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Paulette Marcia Cooper is an American author who is best known for activism against the Church of Scientology and the harassment she suffered as a result. Cooper's books have sold close to a half a million copies. Cooper was born in the Auschwitz concentration camp to Belgian parents around the time they were murdered there. After spending years in various orphanages in Belgium, she was adopted by the Cooper family at age 6 and came to the United States. At age 8, she became an American citizen. She began her freelance writing career in 1968, after completing a master's degree in psychology. As a result of her earlier study of comparative religion at Harvard University for a summer, she became interested in religious cults and began studying Scientology/Dianetics in 1968 in order to write about it.